It is known to inject poultry carcasses with solutions containing flavor-enhancers, preservatives, substances which promote tenderness, juiciness and fattiness, and texture modifiers so that the cooked product, upon eating, can be of improved quality.
For example, in my U.S. Pat. No. 5,302,406 and a application Ser. No. 08/190,652, now U.S. Pat. No. 5,436,017 I have described a method of inhibiting bacterial growth in meat by injecting, inter alia, a citrate solution into poultry.
In these systems, as well as in the following U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,850,090, 3,754,302, 3,682,087, 3,682,088, 3,556,809, 3,511,164, 4,074,389 and 3,946,117, aqueous solutions containing salts and vegetable oil emulsions may be injected into the meat tissue of a poultry carcass to substantial concentrations therein for a variety of purposes.
In cooking processes, for example, roasting on a rotating spit, i.e. in a rotisserie, however, it is frequently observed that the product is drier in certain regions and more moist in others, thereby giving the consumer the impression that the product is less well cooked and even raw in certain regions and more well cooked and perhaps even over-done in others.
In general, the breast meat of poultry tends to give the impression of being less moist and thigh, drumstick, (leg) and wing portions of a poultry carcass may give the impression of being more moist or even raw in some cases and undercooked in others.
By and large, the injection of poultry with needles has attempted to introduce the aqueous solution uniformly at all points at which the needle pierces the carcass. As a consequence, the needle arrangement was such that the percentage of the solution at injection would be expected to be the same at all points at which the injection takes place, i.e. throughout the meat of the carcass including the breast and other portions such as the thigh, drumsticks or leg and wings.
In practice, however, with a uniform array of needles piercing both the breast and the drumstick or leg portions, the proportion of the solution in the meat may not be the same at all locations because of the configuration of the carcass, the different depths to which the needles may penetrate the flesh, the different degrees to which the flesh at the various locations takes up the solution, etc. It is therefore not uncommon that, while the needle array is uniform, all the needles have the same flow cross section, the same solution pressure is applied to all needles and, indeed, every attempt is made to bring about a uniform solution contained in the meat of the breast and legs, the solution concentration may be greater in the leg regions than in the breast.
As a result, after the cooking process, the leg portions may appear to be excessively moist while the breast may appear to be excessively dry and the consumer may have the mistaken impression from the greater moisture content of the leg meat, that the leg portions of the carcass are undercooked. The problem is accentuated if the overall injection of the solution is increased to reduce dryness in the breast and efforts to obviate the problem by reducing the total proportion of the solution in the carcass can result in excessively dry breast meat.
I have now found that, surprisingly, the effect mentioned above may be a result of the attempt at uniformity with which such solutions have been injected into the poultry meat heretofore.